Landscape Photography Post-Processing Tutorial in Lightroom

In this tutorial, I will show you how to transform boring landscape pictures to vibrant and beautiful images in Lightroom in quick and easy steps. I will show you the real benefits of using the RAW image format and just some of the possibilities it gives you to non-destructively enhance your photographs without ever leaving Lightroom. I personally use this technique for post-processing my landscape photography all the time and I hope you find it useful.

Read on if you want to be able to take an image like this (original, as came out of the camera):

NIKON D700 @ 28mm, ISO 400, 1/160, f/10.0

and transform it to an image like this:

NIKON D700 @ 28mm, ISO 400, 1/160, f/10.0

1) Shoot RAW, post-process RAW

If you are still shooting JPEG and you are not sure why you should be shooting RAW, check out my “RAW vs JPEG” article. This tutorial will only work on RAW images, so make sure that you are picking a RAW file before attempting to follow the steps. Lightroom will not let you change white balance or color profiles on JPEG images and although you can tweak some things like color temperature and tint, I still do not recommend messing with those. If you want the best image quality and the most options for post-processing, you should be shooting RAW.

2) Fix White Balance

Although I trust my camera’s “Auto White Balance” most of the time, the camera in some cases does not correctly choose the right white balance for me (which is normal in tough lighting conditions). In the above example, the white balance was way off, because the scene looked more yellow compared to what my camera captured during the sunset. Let’s try changing the white balance to “Daylight” and see what happens:

Here is the change:

NIKON D700 @ 28mm, ISO 400, 1/160, f/10.0

Much better! Let’s play with camera calibration now.

3) Adjust Camera Calibration

If you are getting frustrated with Lightroom, because the image you load from your camera looks different than the image you saw on your camera’s LCD, then you should definitely check out the “Camera Calibration” menu option in the Develop module of Lightroom. Camera calibration profiles were introduced to both Lightroom and Photoshop by Adobe in order to be able to produce more realistic colors while reading and displaying RAW images. These profiles also try to mimic your camera’s profiles such as “Standard” or “Vivid” and generally do a pretty good job in matching the colors, shadows, and RGB saturation levels. When you originally import RAW images into Lightroom, they get converted to the standard “Adobe Standard” camera profile, which looks rather pale, especially on Nikon RAW images. For landscape photography, I find that the best color profiles are either “Camera Standard” or “Camera Vivid”, depending on vivid I want the image to be (if you have a Canon DSLR, you might not have a “Vivid” color profile).

Here is how you can change the camera calibration:

And here is how my image looks like after I changed the color profile to “Camera Vivid”:

NIKON D700 @ 28mm, ISO 400, 1/160, f/10.0

Wow, what a difference! Everything looks so much more colorful and truly vivid!

4) Make that sky bluer!

Although changing camera profile to vivid already added some blue to the sky, in some cases it is still not enough to make it look truly blue. Let’s add some blue to the sky by saturating the blue color:

You have to keep in mind that if you have other blue objects in your scene, you might saturate them too, so be careful. Let’s take a look at how our image now looks:

NIKON D700 @ 28mm, ISO 400, 1/160, f/10.0

Nice – more blue in the sky against some yellow sand are mixing well together in one picture!

5) Play with Tone and Presence

The final touch is to play with Tone and Presence settings under “Basic” tab. Changing the color profile to “Vivid” can sometimes blacken the darker parts of the image. Adding some fill light (around 10-15) can help to bring out some details from those areas. You can also try reducing “Blacks” to brighten up the shadow areas. I typically leave “Brightness” and “Constrast” the same, but in some cases I might increase the contrast to 35-40. “Clarity” is a cool setting that I typically leave at around 50 and I try to not go higher than 10 in “Saturation”. But each picture is different and you will have to adjust the settings on each picture individually and see what looks the best. Here is what I ended up with for this particular image:

Let’s see how the final image looks now:

NIKON D700 @ 28mm, ISO 400, 1/160, f/10.0

Let’s compare that to the original image:

NIKON D700 @ 28mm, ISO 400, 1/160, f/10.0

The difference is night and day… If you feel like the image is over-saturated, simply decrease the saturation level under “Basic” to a lower number and you should be good to go :)

Let me know if you have any questions in the comments section below.

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About Nasim Mansurov

Nasim Mansurov is a professional photographer based out of Denver, Colorado. He is the author and founder of Photography Life, along with a number of other online resources. Read more about Nasim here.

Hi… It was very simple and very easy to understand. Thanks very much. I have always shot in JPG earlier but now I will use RAW format and then try out all this…… In case I encounter any difficulties I will come back to you for help…. Thanks again

Yes Nasim bro I did it….. I took a few pictures in RAW and was able to process them in lightroom and found the results to be much much better…. Since I am using a Canon the Camera calibration is at “Standard”. Thanks once again bra. I will henceforth shot only in RAW.

Pauline, if you cannot see “vivid”, you are most likely shooting with a Canon camera. In that case, just use “standard” and simply increase contrast and saturation a little bit, to get a similar effect.

In CS4, when you open a RAW file, you will see a Camera Raw window open. Click the camera icon (Camera Calibration) and you can select the camera profile by choosing the profile under “Name”.

Dennis, I have heard that Aperture 3 has some stability issues on both Mac and PC platforms, i.e. it crashes every once in a while. I personally like Lightroom better, but it is truly a personal choice. I like the fact that Lightroom integrates with all Adobe products very easily and has full support for DNG format. On the other hand, Aperture is actually faster than Lightroom and is a little more intuitive.

Thank you so much for the tutorial! I know just enough with Photoshop to be dangerous. I often find myself inspired by artists like Peter Lik and am sadly disappointed by my own shots hopefully these tricks will help me. Check out Peter’s blog if you’re looking for inspiration: http://blog.peterlik.com/

Nasim, I ran across your website and threads while Google searching for “d300 vs d90”. I have spent the last 2 hours reading, studying and learning from you and others who have posted comments about much more than that! From lenses to filters to post processing as well as enjoying your and your wive’s images. I just wanted to give you credit and compliment you on your photography, website and also on your patient and kind instruction, which is clear, concise and very informative. Thank-you! I am bookmarking your page for future reference!

Thnx, very useful as usually. It’s a pity that there is no vivid profile for Canons. Anyway, I wanted to ask what kind of lenses do you use for your landscape pictures? Should they always be lower than 20 mm ?

Yes, I agree – Adobe should develop a vivid profile for Canons as well. In terms of lenses, I use a variety of lenses, including: Nikon 24-70mm f/2.8, Nikon 16-35mm f/4.0 VR and Nikon 70-200mm f/2.8 VR II. No, the focal length does not always need to be lower than 20mm. In fact, if you are shooting panoramas, you should shoot with a lens that is not too wide or the images won’t stitch together perfectly.

More of a general processing query rather than limited to landscape post-processing, but have you ever used “all on one” solutions such as Athentech’s Perfectly Clear? And if so, what do you think of them?

I have just tried it and found some photos came up much better than my currently limited Lightroom skills, but some were not so good…

By the way, thanks for taking the time to create and maintain such a great website – there is so much information on here, it’s making my head hurt ;-)

Hi Nasim, I’m trying to follow the same steps you took for enhancing a landscape picture, but I can’t see anywhere the white balance options shown here. I´m also using Lightroom 3. There are only 3 options given: as shot, auto & custom… and that’s it, I try to click on custom to see if it’s there, but there are no more menus. Do I have to change a setting somewhere else to see all the other white balance options? Thanks!

Thank you for your time and generosity sharing so much and useful information.

As part of my workflow I open the raw pictures with Capture NX 2 (CNX2) and immediately, with the default settings, almost always I get a picture with a definition, sharpness, depth and accuracy of color and reduction of noise that I can not get with Lightroom. By the way, the default settings in CNX2 are those you in the camera at the moment you take the picture (like white balance, D-Lighting, Auto distortion control, etc.)

In order to shorter my workflow avoiding the use of CNX2 I have tried different settings in LR to get the pictures to the level CNX2 leave them but that is just not possible to me. Please be aware that CNX2 is a very different product with respect to the original Capture NX (is not an upgrade), meaning that if you had a bad experience with CNX you have to give a try to CNX2.

I think Nikon have some not known insights on their raw format which are taken as advantage in CNX2 (made to Nikon by Nik Software).

Considering all what I said, I wonder why I hear so little about the use of this product among the nikonians in general and also the readers of your posts. Nasim, Have you had some experience with CNX2 ?

Hi sir Nasim, I love reading you articles it is very clear and informative. I just want to ask your opinion if it is ok or advisable to use Nik Software’s Color Efex Pro during post process. I use it on my shots i just dont know if it is ok or its like faking the shot. I only do color adjustment, u just love their presets and played with it. Thanks!

“If you are getting frustrated with Lightroom, because the image you load from your camera looks different than the image you saw on your camera’s LCD, then you should definitely check out the “Camera Calibration” menu option in the Develop module of Lightroom. ” Sire, thank you for that. That ‘Camera Calibration’ will help me a lot.

Really interesting article Nasim, I have both Lightroom and Capture NX2, would you stick to NX2 and their RAW files or switch to lightroom? I some times use both and seem to get confused as to which is the better.

Hello! Great writing easy to understand articles, thanks! Having said that i want to know your thoughts on one thing, as a designer one can easily retouch and make any boring photographs look better than what it is. Post processing is good and is needed to a limited extent. Maybe some alignment and exposure correction, brightness contrast….and nothing beyond that. If we are not able to get photos almost to what is desired within in the camera and end up doing more of post processing then the person should be called a graphic artist more than a photographer! Just my thoughts!

I don’t know if you are still monitoring this thred but if you are maybe you or someone could answer a question for me.

I’ve been an aperture user for a few years now but there are some features in LR that I like so I’m trailing LR4.

When I want to adjust the white balance I only get three options. 1 as shot. 2 auto. 3 manual. Has this changed since previous versions? And second, in camera calibration I don’t get a choice of standard or vivid, only 1 option?

Wow. Thank you so much for this tutorial. It was very easy to understand and follow. Especially for someone like me who’s always having hard time following tutorials. :p Also, i discovered some settings/adjustments in lightroom that i have no idea of. Thanks again, Sir! :)

Nasim, I don’t get to check your site often as I would like to, it is blocked at work (all hobby/blog/social networking sites are blocked). When ever I do, I learn something new from PL and most importantly, I ‘connect’ with your site like no other. The reviews are informative, authoritative and also fun to read without the overhead of heaviness other review websites drown you with. There is a a very casual & fun feel to your site. The pics are spectacular and inspiring and challenge my curiosity. I actually bought the 35mm F1.8 Nikkor after reading your comparison article and I am totally enjoying shooting with this gem of a lens on my D40. So, a big THANK YOU for the great work and the countless hours you guys are putting in! Cheers and good luck taking the site forward.

As I think you all know, shooting in Neutral or Standard modes usually results in having more Dynamic Range detail stored in the raw values, mainly in the dark areas of the image.

Having said this, I have the following challenges: :)

1 – If we set the camera’s Scene Capture Type to -say- Standard, this means that the raw values stored will be different from -say- Vivid?

2 – If we shoot in “Standard” mode, SHOULD we set the Profile to “Standard” in Lightroom’s Camera Calibration panel and start editing from that?

3 – If there is no relation between the Scene Capture Type of the camera and Lightroom’s Profile in Camera Calibration panel, AND since we can change White Balance in several ways (via Basic panel and/or via HSL panel), why should we care about the Profile in Camera Calibration panel in the first place? And, if we SHOULD care about this (because of the different Dynamic Range values stored), so shouldn’t we edit on the same profile for the same reason?

4 – Unless we shoot with a X-Rite’s color calibration passport (and do all the other adjustments accordingly), I don’t see any advantage to even look at or change anything in the Camera Calibration panel in Lightroom.

Honestly, for what I’ve been reading for the past weeks, my conclusion is IF YOU DON’T SHOOT WITH A COLOR CALIBRATION TARGET it’s easier to ignore the Profile in the Camera Calibration panel and change the WB in the Basic/HSL panels accordingly BUT always (!) shoot in Neutral mode to get more Dynamic Range.

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